The Chairman Answers: How could we NOT be concerned? Our Party's only purpose and reason for existing is to lead the fight to end all oppression and exploitation, and a key part of that is the fight to get rid of all racist garbage, in the relations between people and in people's thinking. It would be impossible to have a real revolution without doing this, and any so-called "revolutionary party" that did not do this would be a failure and a disgrace.
So, of course, we are most definitely concerned about this, and we are actively fighting against this racism and oppression on every front, in every sphere of society.
Our Party has published a pamphlet making a major statement on this all-important question: COLD TRUTH, LIBERATING TRUTH: How This System Has Always Oppressed Black People, And How All Oppression Can Finally Be Ended. COLD TRUTH, LIBERATING TRUTH (or CTLT) starts right out by emphasizing that "the enslavement and exploitation of Black people has been a big part of building up the wealth and power that the rulers of this country have in their hands"; and that "for revolution to have a chance in this country--a revolution to do away with all this oppression and exploitation and to change society from bottom to top--Black people must play and will play a big part in this revolution." CTLT goes on to give a basic picture of the problem--and the solution--by quoting from our Party's Programme:
"Our Party's...Programme speaks to the history of vicious oppression of Black people, and other oppressed nationalities, throughout the history of the USA, and sums up the situation today:
" `Discrimination, the denial of democratic rights, violent police repression, suppression and mutilation of their cultures and languages, exploitation and oppression as members of the working class, with the lowest positions, constantly high unemployment, the lowest paid jobs, the worst housing, the worst of bad health care and other social services--all this and more is daily life for the masses of these nationalities in the U.S. today. And it is these conditions that the proletariat in power must and will eliminate.' (page 69)"
The Party Programme makes very clear that, as the proletariat seizes power, it will move directly and decisively to uproot racist oppression. Racist organizations--such as the KKK and the rest--will be smashed by the power of the proletarian state and the mobilization of the masses. The brutalizing, murdering police of the capitalist state will be defeated and shattered as part of the overall armed struggle for power--they will be replaced by armed and organized militias of the masses in the neighborhoods and everywhere masses of people live and work throughout society. These will be armed organizations of the revolutionary masses, backed up by the regular armed forces of the proletarian state--this will be the new, liberating power in society. Racist ideas will no longer be encouraged, or tolerated, but tirelessly struggled against. The masses will be educated in their real, fundamental class interests and organized to wage ideological and practical struggle to continue making revolution and overcome all social inequality. As the Party Programme says: "The common myths among the people will be discussed and debunked, and the lies of the bourgeoisie will be ruthlessly and thoroughly exposed."
At the same time, as the rebuilding of society and its revolutionary transformation is carried forward under the rule of the proletariat, from the very start priority will be given to the inner cities and other areas where the oppressed masses have been concentrated and discriminated against under the rule of capitalism. Masses of people, including millions who have been unemployed or denied a decent job under capitalism, will be employed to rebuild these neighborhoods--and mobilized to take part fully in revolutionizing society in every sphere--at the same time as discrimination and segregation are outlawed and eliminated in fact, through the action of the proletarian state and the mobilization of the masses. Again, the Party Programme says it point blank, like this: "All this, of course, cannot be done in a minute. But much of it can and will be... Discrimination, for example, will be immediately and forcefully banned in employment, housing, and all other spheres." And the struggle will be carried forward in the new, socialist society, to fully and finally eliminate any and all forms of white supremacy and racist oppression.
From time to time, those representing the ruling class in capitalist society mouth some words about overcoming racism and discrimination, but they never make good on this--and they never could. As COLD TRUTH, LIBERATING TRUTH points out, the capitalist-imperialist system "has white supremacy and racism built into it, in its foundation and on every level...to do away with this oppression means to tear this whole system apart and throw it on the garbage dump. Unless you are ready to do that--unless you are working for a revolution that will bring down this system and bring about a whole different world"--you cannot eliminate white supremacy and racism. That is something the bourgeois ruling class can never do. But it is just what we intend to do: it is something the class-conscious proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard must do and is determined to do, because only by tearing this whole system apart and throwing it on the garbage dump--only by overthrowing its rule and moving on to uproot every form of exploitation and all social inequality--can the proletarian class win all-the-way liberation and achieve a communist society and world without distinctions of class and nation, without antagonistic relations among people. As Marx made clear, only by emancipating all humanity in this way can the proletariat win its own emancipation.
So, while the capitalist ruling class cannot thrive without maintaining built-in discrimination and national oppression, WE cannot succeed--the proletariat cannot carry out its historic revolutionary mission --unless we are serious about doing away with all such oppression and actively struggle to do so. It's just that basic.
Just as it is necessary to overthrow capitalism and then carry forward the proletarian revolution in order to finally and fully uproot white supremacy and racism, it is also vitally important to wage the fight against white supremacy and racism right now. This is a crucial front of struggle and a pivotal part of building the revolutionary movement, uniting the proletariat and masses of people around their real revolutionary interests, and laying the basis to wage and to win the armed struggle to overthrow the rule of capitalism and establish the rule of the proletariat when the time is ripe.
As CTLT emphasizes, the masses of Black people are in a strategically powerful position to wage the fight against their own oppression and against all oppression--they are part of a people, an African-American nation, that has always been and remains brutally oppressed under this system and at the same time they are "in fact a key part of the most revolutionary class, the proletariat." This is potentially a very explosive combination--capable of bringing a great force to the revolutionary cause. And fundamentally the same is true of the masses of Latinos and other oppressed nationalities in the U.S. But this great potential power can only be fully realized as it is given conscious revolutionary direction and unleashed as part of an overall revolutionary movement, based on the emancipating interests of the proletariat and uniting all who can be united under the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat and its vanguard Party. As CTLT puts it, "The key alliance that must be built for revolution in this country is the alliance between the struggles of the oppressed nationalities to end their national oppression and the struggle of the proletariat, of all nationalities, to end all oppression and exploitation through the overthrow of capitalism and the advance to communism worldwide."
With this understanding, our Party carries out its bedrock work among the proletariat, especially its most exploited sections, which include millions of Black people, Latinos, and other oppressed nationalities, and also millions of white proletarians. We give great emphasis in this work to building the fight against white supremacy and racism and to uniting the proletariat, of all nationalities, to not only take this up but to be on the front ranks of this fight. At the same time, we carry out work among all sections of the people, including the middle class, to mobilize them in this fight and to win them to stand with the basic masses and to follow the lead of the revolutionary proletariat.
It is with this orientation and these goals that we deploy the forces of the Party and unite with others to wage this fight against white supremacy and racism as part of the overall struggle against all oppression, on every front, in every sphere of society: against police brutality; to defend, and extend, affirmative action; to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and win his freedom; against the ruling class policies of building prisons instead of schools, turning housing projects into prisons and driving more people into homelessness, cutting welfare while providing no jobs with decent wages, and on and on; to uphold the right of abortion and to rise up against the discrimination, degradation, and brutality brought down on women; to battle things like Proposition 187 in California and the many-sided attacks on immigrants; to oppose chauvinist "English only" campaigns and other attacks on the languages and cultures of Latinos and other oppressed peoples; to combat the continuing oppression and the ongoing devastation of the Native American peoples; to expose and lay bare the utter falsehood and reactionary essence of racist theories of the so-called "genetic inferiority" of Black people and other white supremacist garbage being promoted from the top levels of society; and against all the major attacks on the people coming from the system and the power structure.
Through all this our strategic objective is to unite all who can be united in these struggles, to help fighters on one front develop into fighters on every front against the system and all its oppression, to bring to the fore the class-conscious proletariat and its revolutionary movement, build its key allies and the broadest possible unity under its leadership, and make all this serve the goal of preparing for and then carrying out the overthrow of this capitalist-imperialist system and the revolutionary transformation of society.
In this way--through this revolution, and only through this revolution--at long last, hundreds of years of horrendous oppression of African-Americans and other oppressed peoples, and thousands of years of society's division into masters and slaves, will finally and fully be brought to an end.